Who Is The Ultimate Culture Game Changer?

HuffPost's Game Changers series celebrates 100 innovators, visionaries, and leaders in 12 categories who, whether working in the spotlight or under the radar, are changing how we look at the world and the way we live in it. We salute them for their willingness to take risks and question the status quo.

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Changed the game by: Rethinking time and space in her Pulitzer-winning novel "A Visit From the Goon Squad."
Jennifer Egan proved herself a masterful writer long ago with "Look at Me" and "The Keep." Still, for years she felt isolated from the New York literary circle and was left off many "Best Of" lists. Egan finally "arrived" this year with "A Visit from the Goon Squad," which gained her the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction and solidified her place amongst the Franzens and Lethems of the literary world. Egan's skillful shuffling of time and place in "A Visit from the Goon Squad" captures the outlook of contemporary America: obsessed with nostalgia and hurling forward into a digital future we don't yet fully understand. The book is already being adapted into an HBO series.
Egan's advice for young writers: Ignore those "best of" lists.
Must-click: Egan's site
(Photo Credit: AP Images)

Changed the game by: Leading a new era of dancers at the New York City Ballet.
In only his second year with the New York City Ballet, Chase Finlay has breathed life into the 2011 NYCB season at Lincoln Center. The company's 21-year-old soloist mesmerized audiences and critics alike with his performance as Apollo in the Stravinsky-Balanchine classic -- a role that is tough to land, and even tougher to portray -- and then as Tony in in Jerome Robbins's "West Side Story Suite." The New York Times lauded his ability to switch between roles effortlessly: "Few dancers can transform from a god into a Jet, but Mr. Finlay... showed he can be both." By summer's end, the young talent had been promoted to soloist in the company.
He said it: "I went to see The Nutcracker, which my older sister was in. I was probably 6. The first act, I was kind of bored out of my mind, but the second act came around and the character Chinese comes out of the box and starts doing all these split jumps, and then the Candy Cane did all these jumps, and I just turned to my mom and said, 'I have to do this.'"
Must-click: NYC Ballet
(Photo Credit: Paul Kolnik)

Changed the game by: Rethinking the Broadway musical.
Trey Parker and Matt Stone, known for the foul-mouthed and sharp-witted TV cartoon "South Park," managed to translate their success into a critically acclaimed Broadway production that has sold out theaters for months to come. The musical, about two Mormons on a mission to war-torn Uganda, sends up the schmaltz that can too often characterize musical theater. Still, with its pointed dialogue, it maintains a feel-good tone, a balance that Parker spoke of in an interview with Terry Gross: "I don't think anybody would want to see a two-hour-long Mormon-bashing... this was sort of this conundrum that we like to talk about -- we think what they believe is really, really ridiculous, and yet they seem like pretty happy people."
Trophy boys: "The Book of Mormon" swept the Tonys this year -- nominated for 14 awards, Parker and Stone nabbed nine trophys, including Best Musical, Best Original Score and Best Book of a Musical.
Must-click: Parker and Stone on "60 Minutes"
(Photo Credit: Getty Images)

Changed the game by: Merging fashion and art in a way that resonated with a wider audience.
When Alexander McQueen died in 2010, the loss was felt within the insular world of the fashion elite. But Andrew Bolton, curator at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, changed this by putting McQueen's legacy in a new, artistic context, open to the public. He teamed up with Harold Koda, curator in charge at the Costume Institute, to create "Savage Beauty," the Met's massive, gorgeous retrospective of McQueen's work. The exhibit set attendance records on opening day, trouncing those of popular shows like the Jacqueline Kennedy and Chanel exhibitions, and was extended beyond its original end date. 600,000 viewers passed through for the show, and it quickly became one of the 10 most popular exhibits ever at the Met.
Andrew Bolton on McQueen: "I never realized it until I looked at all of his clothes, but he was such a brave person that he was able to use fashion to discuss and reveal his interior self."
Must-click: "Savage Beauty" video
(Photo Credit: Getty Images / Patrick McMullan)

Changed the game by: Championing unconventional art in his role as the director of MOCA.
Last year, Jeffrey Deitch created a stir in the modern art world when he left his galleries in New York to assume the role of director at MOCA, becoming the first gallerist to head a major American art institution. But the curator has always rattled the establishment, championing the more unconventional work of Haring, Basquiat and Koons, and creating the first reality show about art, "Artstar." His first show as director was "Art in the Streets," a massive survey of graffiti art since the seventies that included early practitioners like Chris Pape, Lee Quinones and Futura, as well as today's big street art stars, Shepard Fairy and the anonymous Banksy. It generated huge crowds, plenty of controversy (over an outdoor mural by Blu) and pushed Los Angeles further into the spotlight as a major center of contemporary art.
Must-watch: Art In The Streets
Must-click: MOCA
(Photo Credit: Getty Images)

Changed the game by: Using MoMA as an incubator of solutions to an American crisis.
Barry Bergdoll represents a new style of curator, using the museum not just to house culture, but as a place of engagement. With his 2011 exhibit, "Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream," Bergdoll, designed an advocacy-driven show that captures the public outcry around the foreclosure crisis in the U.S. The show was complemented by five workshops around the country that brought together teams of experts in various fields, with the goal of rethinking suburban structures around housing and community. The final exhibition will include the work of the five teams around the country and will open to the public in January 2012.
He said it: "The idea of single-family houses on private lots reachable only by car has been broken, and this new reality has hit especially hard in suburbs. It is here, rather than in the next ring of potential sprawl, where architects, landscape designers, artists, ecologists, and elected officials need to rethink reshaping urban America for the coming decades."
Must-click: "Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream"
(Photo Credit: Patrick McMullan)

Changed the game by: Standing out as a prolific and visionary architect.
She is the world's best-known woman architect, and since she was awarded the Pritzker prize in 2004, Zaha Hadid has become one of the most respected architects working today. But in the past two years, her accomplishments have put her up there with Gehry and Koolhaas as one of the major designers of our time. The Iraqi-born architect's work, once thought to be more outlandish than realistic, has become visionary. This year, she designed Glasgow's Riverside Museum, as well as The London Aquatics Centre for the London 2012 Olympics. She was the architect behind The Guangzhou Opera House, which was shortlisted for the RIBA Lubetkin Prize (an award for best international building outside the EU). Her adeptly designed Evelyn Grace Academy won the Stirling Prize, which she also took home in 2010 for her design of the MAXXI centre in Rome.
She said it: "You have to be very focused and work very hard, but it is not about working hard without knowing what your aim is! You really have to have a goal. The goal posts might shift, but you should have a goal, know what it is that you are trying to find out."
Must-click: Zaha Hadid
(Photo Credit: Getty Images)